Xabi Alonso the voice of reason at Real

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Alonso, right, has no illusions about the importance of the Champions League to Real’s turbulent seasonJuanJo Martin/EPA

Tony Barrett

Published at 12:01AM, February 11 2013

“Who are you here to see?” asks an employee at Real Madrid’s 200-acre Ciudad
training ground on the outskirts of Spain’s capital. “Xabi Alonso,” is the
reply. “Oh. Good for you,” the worker says. “He is different. He is a very
normal person.”

In the soap opera that is Real Madrid, the quality of being normal is suddenly
prized. It offers serenity, an escape from the incendiary front pages of Marca
and its revelations about splits within one of Europe’s most celebrated,
most talked about, clubs. Alonso, understated, unpretentious and “very
normal”, is the personification of what Real need to